California Dog Bite Lawyer

A California Dog Bite Lawyer will let you know that the owner of a dog that is known to be dangerous is completely liable for injuries that the dog causes to any person. A person that has an undomesticated animal is strictly liable for harm that was caused by the dangerous characteristics of dogs of this specific breed. If an owner knows that his or her domesticated animal has peculiarly hazardous tendencies, with hazardous meaning that the dog is likely to cause serious injury, the owner is fully responsible for the wounds and injuries caused by those unusually hazardous tendencies, applying Restatement Second of Torts, Section 509. At common law, the owner or keeper of a domesticated dog is usually not legally responsible for injuries inflicted by the dog unless the injuries were the result of a ferocious inclination of which the owner had notice or knowledge of. Liability for foreseeable harm will be obligatory only after evidence that the particular dog had a hazardous tendency that provoked the plaintiff's injury and that the defendant had definite or practical awareness of such tendency. The legal term for this awareness is "scienter". The main push of an action for neglect in a dog attack case is to present the evidence that is intended to convince a jury or other trier of the facts that the defendant had scienter. The best way to and most convincing proof of scienter is to get a history of the dog’s previous attacks or violent behaviour that will allow any sensible person to notice inference that the dog is probably to behave in the same way again. Your California Dog Bite Lawyer might inform you though that one or two bites from a dog may not be enough to prove scienter.